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One of the biggest things that always bothers me in sci-fi, even harder sci-fi like The Expanse, is the missing heat sinks. All those ships would need massive r
by api 2y ago
One of the biggest things that always bothers me in sci-fi, even harder sci-fi like The Expanse, is the missing heat sinks. All those ships would need massive radiators or they’d melt.
The starship in Avatar got that right. Rest of the film is comic book level and derivative but the ship is good.
- DennisP 2y agoIt's worse than you think. Here's a really interesting article on what it would take to get Epstein drive performance: https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-expanses-epstein-drive.html https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-expanses-epstein-dr... This thing would produce more power than all of civilization does today. No radiator could handle it. They use laser fusion, exploding D-He3 fuel pellets well behind the ship, with a giant magnetic nozzle. A tungsten heat shield protects the ship, and reaches an equilibrium temperature without active cooling.
- XorNot 2y agoIn the Expanse though The Drive is always on, which means the ship is tossing propellant mass (efficiently) out the back of it - which means it can dissipate most of it's heat that way.
- mapt 2y agoThe Drive in the Expanse is _nonsensically_ powerful; Turning it on at mass fractions that seem compatible with their ship designs would be akin to a nuclear exchange for anything within thousands of kilometers of the rear end. Talking about thermal and propulsive efficiency for a rocket is a little tricky because there are multiple useful metrics, but in this context "waste heat" is anything that doesn't get tossed out the back.